Transcription
We're gonna meet Mandy, whose daughter Cody was in a life-threatening accident. She stepped into a go-kart in the family's backyard and crashed into a car. The accident was serious. She actually died before rescue workers brought her back to life. Fortunately, she recovered and she's now healthy.
But her mother, Mandy, didn't recover. Mandy suffered from terrible panic attacks and emotional rages that caused her to give up her job as a nurse, nearly destroyed her marriage, and tore her family apart. Tony came to work with his family to repair the relationships and help Mandy to overcome this crippling emotional pattern.
At the point where we're going to join them, where they just gone through a series of strategic interventions with Mandy, her husband, Mandy's mother, and of course the children. The relationships are now repaired. The last piece of the puzzle is to help Mandy overcome the trauma itself. With Tony's help, she'll overcome her panic attacks, stabilize your family, and go back to work helping people as a nurse. She's gonna visit the scene of the accident for the first time without having a panic attack.
They're gonna start by setting the intention for the coaching session. This is step one: set the intention. You have something you can give other people. And so we're gonna go walk around here just real quick and just make sure it's all gone. You start to feel it, 'cause it's brave. You wipe it out, and then we're gonna make sure no students can stop you. Because how'd you like to be able to go back to work and have some fun, or start your new mission in the direction of being, we'll help kids and adults and people like that. Are you up for that new mission? Okay, good.
So here's what I want you to do now. I want you to do is let's do a real quick process for you. I want you right now, in your mind, really simply, I want you to feel this feeling. Okay, feel it. What color is it? All around your body. Okay. Now close your eyes. And as you do this, I want you very simply to say, "I am now gonna be free for a lifetime. I am now gonna be free for life." And say it with a purpose. Ugh, I'm gonna be free for a lifetime. I am now free for a lifetime. I am now free for a lifetime. That's it. Say it from a circle state. I am now free for a lifetime. That's right. Say it from your heart with the circle inside your heart and purple. I am now free for a lifetime. Yes, good.
Do you see how Tony's touching Mandy's shoulder? This is called anchoring. Tony's already done some work with Mandy where they associate safe, good emotions with this touch on her shoulder. He also associates these emotions with the color purple, with the shape of a circle, and with a certain emotional focus. By anchoring safe emotions to these things, they can trigger her to feel safe and strong. So this is step two: establish emotional safety. And it's an important part of the process. Tony presses Mandy's shoulder to remind her of these positive associations, and they give her support, and she sets the intention of being free for a lifetime.
Now they're going to associate this freedom not just with herself, with her ability to help others. And this freedom gives me the ability to help who? Everybody. How does that feel? Awesome. So can you celebrate that by looking at the symbols that used to make you panic? Feel that your body? Yes, of course you can. So let's do this to make it even easier. I want you open your eyes, close your eyes, and feel this thing, that feeling, through every part of your body, from your toes to the top of your head, all the way down your arms, through your fingertips. And where would be the part of your body when you shoot it out the most? Your heart? Your face? Your eyes? Feel it coming for every. Where will it come out most? Where's it come out most from you when you want to send it to something or someone? Nice. Okay. Cut steel comes from your eyes. Beautiful. Or close your eyes and feel that and take from your eyes throughout your whole body.
Now I want you imagine feeling this feeling to your whole body. It's purple, feeling a circle, feeling. Imagine that you've gone into a theater. So when you go to the theater, I want you to feel yourself sitting down in a really cushy chair. Make it a really big screen. Let me know when you're sitting down, that's comfortable. And up on that screen, feeling this feeling in your body, I want you now to feel yourself look up at the screen. That on the screen is a black and white still picture of the accident, all that stuff, but it's frozen, something in time. There's some party that goes that was the gift. Holy cow, sad. That was the gift. Holy cow. That was the gift. It like a purple person. That was the gift. Well, he can see it with this tone of voice that the purple's that makes perfect.
Now Tony's taken Mandy to step three: set up the visualization. Specifically, this is a sequence of steps for diminishing emotional trauma. One of the reasons Mandy's suffering is that when she thinks of the accident, she gets hijacked by powerful emotions of fear and loss, and she stops being able to function. Now, by imagining a theater where she's watching a black-and-white projection of a picture of the accident on a screen, that enables her to disassociate from the intensity of that emotion. Disassociation is a powerful tool we all use every day to detach ourselves from experiences that are overpowering and overwhelming. By getting more disassociated, she can then think clearly and decide what's most important. Mandy's emotions have been out of control. She's trained herself now to be able to disassociate emotionally from the accident so she can have her composure and she can make intelligent decisions.
You're sitting in the chair now. Feel yourself lift out of your body. I know this sounds weird, like floating out, like your spirit is flowing out, almost. You're floating out of your body, and then fill yourself now up in the projection room and look down and see your body sitting in the chair, looking at the screen. So you flow it out of your body. You're back in the projection room, and you can look down and you see yourself sitting there. Feels so funny to see yourself sitting there. Down there? Yeah. I'm not crying. No, you're not crying. And then see yourself from way back here in the projection. Tell me when you're in the projection. Then you see your body down there, sitting there watching. Yeah. Yeah. And then up on the screen, you see that black and white image of the accident. So you're watching yourself watch yourself watch this.
And now take this purple feeling. And here's what you're gonna do. You're gonna watch the whole thing happen, and you're gonna watch it happen in black and white, but you're gonna do it up here, not you. No, no, no. You started the back in your body. Step back here with me in the projection. Goes. Tell me when you're in projection. Is OK? Can you see your body down there watching? Yes. As you're doing it, say a little prayer and thank God for freedom. And what has got? Say back. One of the principles of strategic intervention is to understand what already persuades and motivates the person. Now, Mandy happens to be religious. So when it comes to big issues, Tony will use religious language with her. If she had been a non-believer, he would have used a different approach.
So now take God's gift. Feel yourself in the protection. Are you set against yourself sitting down there? Yes. Keep watching yourself down there. Watch yourself watch the screen. Keep watching yourself down there while on the screen, the whole thing plays out from beginning to end in black and white. And you just feel yourself back here, feeling God's gifts, God's grace. Alright. So all the way through, and have a kind of a little fast, almost like a crazy cartoon. You tell me when it's at the end, and she's okay. Make sure you're watching yourself down there watching. Make sure you see yourself in the chair down that. And then the screens big up there in front of her. All things going from beginning down, all the way to the end. Feel God's grace while it's happening. That's it. That's oh, that's perfect. Okay, good. And you just did what a horse did. I took that little breath of Oz. Let the trauma.
Many of us are slaves to a story, a disempowering story of something that happened to us or something we did in the past that we can no longer control. The story lives on in us, in our language, and the meanings we associate with it, and in the way we replay it in our minds. I like a movie. Is there a story from your past that you keep replaying in your mind's eye? This is step four: get control of your story. Now, this sounds more complicated than actually is. You can get control over your story simply by replaying it in a deliberate way until your mind and body learned from practice that you're in control of the story.
Tony's guiding Mandy to replay the story of the accident, the same story that's been torturing her, but now she's in control. But she gets to replay it herself. She can modify the story so it plays back fast like a cartoon. She can change the color. She can play it backwards, or she can change the soundtrack. Modifying and controlling the story like this puts Mandy in control. So instead of being terrorized by the story when it plays back out of control, she's now like a film director who decides how it will play back. So watch how Tony emphasizes Mandy's control over her story.
Run the whole thing backwards, but watch yourself down there, and watch yourself. You're not. Look at yourself down there. You're not crying, are you? No. Yeah. It's a feel your spirit appear in the booth with me. And now watch it backwards. Falling backwards already. The side. And let me know when you're all the way back to the front, right before she even started to get inside the go-kart. And watch your stuff down. Look how great you're doing. What's happening? While you still seeing on the screen, whisper down to that younger you down there and say, "It all worked out." Yell to her from upstairs. "It all worked out." Compile to you. Watch your turn around and smile. That's it. Good. Let's see y'all back. It's okay. Here. Good.
Notice that Tony's now editing the story. He's adding a conclusion. The conclusion is, "It all worked out." So when we replay a scary story in our heads, we tend to put ourselves in the middle of the story as if we didn't know how it ended. But the truth is, if it's something that happened in the past, we know how the story ended. For Mandy, her daughter got the help she needed, and now she's safe. So Tony's guiding Mandy to send herself that message that the story's actually over, that we know how it ended. The doll came out great.
Now, as you're sitting up here in the booth, say, "Okay, now we're gonna, we're gonna do this back and forth like our records. We're gonna scratch it up so it never feels that way anymore. You know, if you took a record, he's put a neat little closet over and over and over again, a CD. Pretty soon, never play the same way. That's what we're gonna do. So make it in color, but make it go at hyperspeed. Them and you're up the projector. You turn it on really fast, like you watch yourself down. You're watching. And you start to think, you know, this is all over in color. Okay. And now I'll do it this time and do the whole thing. But as you're doing it, I want to yell a few comments down to that younger you down there to let her not pride you are her, or let her know if this all happened for. Because anything you want to yell to her. What's happening? Go ahead and run, run the film again. And run in detail, in color, just like it was happening. And send her this feeling. And then say something to her. What do you want to say to her? It's okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It's only okay. It's what? But she doesn't know is it turned out to be a white. Tell her my gift. Yeah. How much more does she get to love her man and herself? How much more things better? Mm-hmm. How much stronger is all family? Everybody told her what Cody is like today. Tell her she got stuck back in time there and thought for all that, but this is the end or was horrible. What actually happened? How is Cody now strong? Yeah, she's even stronger than if this happened. It never happened. People that have been protected and never gotten hurt, they live in fear. Somebody's broken legs, arms, been to hell, they don't have fear because they know they can deal with it. They're stronger. Just like you know you can deal with it now. You can help someone because you've been through this. You never would have been able hot before. Okay. Help. It's only been ten minutes.
As they started, Mandy's set her intention, establish protective emotions for herself, visualize the theater scene which gave her enough distance from her emotions that she can make a smart decision, and then she replayed and modified the story in her mind's eye. So instead of being stuck in the middle of the story, she can now control it and edit it and even give it a new ending. Since the story is over, she has emotional closure. She knows that everyone turned out stronger than they were before, and that there's no need for panic and fear.
There's a step five: test. Now that Mandy's trained herself and being able to create her own meanings, she's now going to test her abilities by walking over to the scene of the accident itself. Got me something. You look at this car and you think about how your life has changed for the better. It could come from this, even though it wasn't by design consciously. There's a plan larger than yourself. Now you can see how challenging it is for Mandy to see the go-kart. The place is so scary for her that she hasn't been able to walk here, even though it's in her own backyard. Now, with help of these strategies, she can stand here and decide deliberately, consciously, what's most important to her.
Tony can see she needs even more emotional support right now. So watch how he's gonna help her. Surround the single temple. Put yourself in a purple state, and then send it to your eyes, and then put a big circle around it, and then make the sound. Good again. Make the sound go over the whole thing. Surround it without sound. Move around and make the sound come on. Make the sound around her three or four times. Overcome it. That's it. That's it. Take it over on the side. Make sure you make this out on this side. What's the phrase? Live smart. Said again. Live smart. Say it again. Live smart. Kayla smart. I'm smart. Yep. That's great. Mandy use the anchor she associates with strong, safe emotions: purple, circle, the funny sound she makes, and the phrase "live smart." Remember, Tony spent time with Mandy before this video started generating safe, supportive emotions that would protect her from having a harsh experience when she comes to the accident site. They can draw on this protection for her.
This is step six: support. When someone wants to challenge themselves with a difficult thought or emotion or experience, you never do so without making sure the person is completely supported and safe. So notice Tony's being careful. He's watching Mandy like AHA to make sure that she doesn't have a bad experience. Now they're gonna walk a few feet away to the actual site of the go-kart crash. Yeah. What did this truck? What is this? What do we have to thank this truck for? With the gift this truck provided that whenever you look at this truck, you could have a whole new meaning in your life. She didn't keep going. That's right. Did you hear that? This is a whole new meaning for Mandy. Previously, she associated this place with her daughter's accident. That's a disempowering meaning that sets her up as a victim of a tragedy. The truth is that the tragedy didn't happen. Her daughter is safe, and Mandy is able to free herself from the emotions that were trapping her before. But even more, the accident probably saved her from other dangers in her life.
This is step seven: new meaning. When we overcome a painful emotional pattern, we make room for a new meaning. For instance, Mandy can now see that before the accident, her marriage was already in trouble. So now, since the accident, she's given her marriage the attention and the strategies it needed, and now her family is happier and healthier as a result. That's the meaning she wants to have, and now, thanks to this process, that's the meaning she can fully embrace on an emotional level.
All of you are gonna live happier, closer. There's something about it. You know, you never wanted to happen again, and it won't because you're smarter. You learn the lessons. But thank God for the experience because it made you learn lessons that were way beyond this. This car was a form of transportation, but the transportation was to transport your life and your family's life to a new level. It's almost like a time machine, though, where it jettisoned you guys out of a nightmare and back into the loving family that you deserve to have. It put a stop to the patterns that were going on back then. And when you can look at that now and give you a gut feeling, look how much you've blown, how big your growth is. That for you. This is huge because I've been able to come out here. You just wanted to come out here. Yeah. Since when? A couple days after the accident. Yeah, 'cause I tried to come out here a couple days after the accident, and I couldn't. I couldn't do it.
From now on, that accident returned for what do you want to call it? What was it really? It turned out to be a that accent turned out to be a wet for everyone or what alarm clock? Yeah. And a gift. Gift. So for now, when you go, ever since the gift, ever since the gift, I like that. Ever since the gift. Yeah. Ever since the day we got that gift. Ever since we get. Anyway, if you can find the gifts in the most traumatic things in life, how free is your life? Worries? And if you can do that within yourself, you can get someone else there. That's awesome. If you get somebody else there, then there's no one you can't help. That's awesome. So I can go back to help you. Yes. That's all right there. That's your breakthrough. You got any? That's that's my breakthrough. That's it.
[Music]